ABSTRACT
Since the end of the civil war, Lebanon has remained afflicted by sporadic rounds of orchestrated sectarian and political violence, enabled by the sectarian power-sharing agreement that the political system of the country rests on. In this context, the interaction between formal religious and political institutions can both act as a factor of community vulnerability and resilience towards violent extremism. This chapter contributes to shedding light on this under-researched intersection by focusing on Dar Al-Fatwa, the official Sunni religious institution administered by the Lebanese government. In particular, it looks into its (in)ability to become active in the field of P/CVE in the face of multiple institutional constraints. Lebanon presents a case whereby P/CVE policies proposed by the National PVE Coordination Unit were comprehensive; however, formal and informal obstacles made their implementation inefficient and inadequate. By analysing formal Sunni religious actors’ engagement at both the national and local levels, this study attributes Dar el-Fatwa’s inefficiency in preventing violent extremism to the following four factors: political actors’ co-optation of Sunni formal religious institutions, the limitation of Dar el-Fatwa’s role in P/CVE, Dar el-Fatwa’s contested legitimacy and the rising competition with informal religious entities, and Dar el-Fatwa’s role in the context of hybrid sovereignties.
